After the liquidation of assets at Taylor Municipal (KTYL), Greenlee County (KCFT) and Gabbs (KGAB), the employees of Shpadoinkle West put themselves into stasis and were scattered all over the world. After 3 months laying low, the acquisition of FBO facilities at San Jose International (KSJC) triggered a beacon and awakened the slumbering giants, guiding them towards the west coast where they will unite to once again provide excellent service to visiting aircraft. So say we all.

Recently, it has come to our attention that our equal and direct competitor United Airlines (UAL, -999.99%), did some very bad things and mistreated its customers in ways that would make you choose Shpadoinkle Air for your next flight instead. Shpadoinkle Air is proud to announce that in our long and rich history as a silicon valley startup since 1969, we have never participated in the practices of overbooking or involuntary de-boarding.

In 1984 when we discovered overbooking was a thing, we developed a revolutionary customer service policy. At every opportunity, we remind our passengers that: they are our valued customers, some seated passengers were never on the right flight to begin with, and that we were always at peace with Oceania.

We didn’t think much of it when the boss offered marketing and the design team an all-expenses paid vacation to Florida. After all, they had worked hard and earned it. Then the maintenance personnel started reporting missing paint equipment, and out of nowhere the boss announced that he was personally taking delivery of “the company’s new 404”. Marketing rushed to the airport and took the first flight back, but by the time they got to the tarmac, it was too late…

(hint: right click to view image in new tab and see the disasters that aren’t gonna be easy to undo in their gruesome detail. I just realized, tours are booked for tomorrow morning, we may not have time. Crap.)

When I leased Shpadoinkle Airway’s DC3, I did it for variety to try to attract pilots. Given the DC3’s higher operating costs compared to caravan ($800/hr vs $500/hr) and slower speed (allegedly, you can go about the same speed if you run it at WEP and pretend the engine is made of titanium). I expected to fly with most of the seats empty, since Shpadoinkle’s Quebec network is only low volume 2 lotters. 8 pax to, 4 pax back. In short, I expected it to do worse than the single engine, fuel efficient Caravan. BUT, I was pleasantly surprised when I realized I hadn’t even considered the full implications of 26 seats (that FSE’s DC3 operators have probably known for years):
In a regular 2 lot hub and spoke network that anyone can have without a huge amount of wealth, the set up is as follows:
You have your hub, usually somewhere in the center of the network to minimize distance from the satellites. Then you have your focus airport which is the airport you concentrate all your hub airport’s passenger terminal firepower on. This is the route you fly the most since it will produce the most income/flight, optimally 24 pax in 2 flights or 12 pax/flight. Then with the rest of the satellites, you have a PT capacity of 12 pax total per satellite.
With the 13 seat caravan, if you’re very lucky, and jobs to 2 airports near each other spawn exactly 6 jobs each, you can have 2 satellites together to fly a triangle route. At airport A you have 6 pax going to B and 6 pax going to C. At airport B you drop off the 6 pax going to B and replace them with 6 pax going to A, at airport C you drop off the 6 pax going to C and pick up 6 more pax going to A, then you return to airport A dropping the 12 pax from B and C, delivering 24 passengers in 3 flights or 8 pax/flight before needing to return to the hub. Under optimal conditions.
Under normal circumstances where pax don’t spawn evenly, you have to fly A-B-A-C at an average of 6 pax/flight, which costs time and effort, since in addition to making an extra flight, you will also have go through the process of holding and loading passengers to prevent the wrong pax from occupying the correct pax’s seats.
But with a DC3, you are guaranteed a triangle – even if there is a total passenger imbalance and the 2×12 pax from 2 satellites all spawn at the hub, you can still deliver them all in 3 stops. Under optimal conditions… you can start out with 4×6 pax and visit 4 satellites, delivering 48 pax in 5 flights or 9 pax/flight. Or better, you can start out with 2×6 pax to 2 satellites + 12 pax to your focus airport and deliver 48 pax in 4 flights, or 12 pax/flight.
The only downside is of course, the booking fees.
You won’t get too rich flying 2 lot networks in a DC3, but I made v$23,000 over 4 flights which, while only marginally higher than my numbers flying the Caravan in Shpadoinkle’s Pennsylvania network, took much less effort. Its nothing like the profit you would get flying the DC3 in conjunction with 3 lot property (~$10k/flight on a good day), but considering the very low cost of a 2 lot network, the DC3 gets my full recommendation from a business standpoint.

About 1% of Shpadoinkle’s profits come from supplying our own fuel to system-owned rentals that we then rent ourselves, resulting in what is effectively discounted renting.

For the month of March we have already made v$3.3million in flight revenue, and it is estimated that refueling wet rentals that we fly ourselves provided about v$33,000 in savings. For reference, v$33000 will supply a single 3 lot FBO for 73 days, however it requires the sale of approximately 38,000 Gallons of fuel costing approximately v$130,000 wholesale, which in order to achieve such consumption levels legitimately would require either good locations at major airports, or an enormous scale of operations such as what Shpadoinkle has.

In March, Shpadoinkle spent approximately v$500,000 on rental fees, meaning that providing our own fuel resulted in rental savings of about 5%, compared to renting wet without being the fuel supplier.

Again, note that the v$33000 were accumulated through a massive amount of flights likely totalling more than 300 flights (the new edition of FSEreporter will tell, unless Shpadoinkle or licecolon somehow do not make it onto the top 10 list), meaning that on average, only v$100 was saved per flight as a result of FBO ownership totalling v$300k per month in supply costs alone.

In addition, supplying fuel to the system is best case scenario, as the system will always buy at a fixed price (currently $4.19 for Jet A). You will have to undercut the system to sell to players who are few and far between, and unless you are the only provider in miles, players can simply choose to refuse if they consider your prices too high.

Except in specific airports and locales, fuel sales do not a profitable FBO ownership make, but they can ease the cost burden when operating rented aircraft.

We do transparency reports because we are ethical, and not because of any exhibitionist tendencies and turn ons associated with exposing our internals that may or may not exist.

Though the Month of February conspired against us by arbitrarily skimping on the amount of days in the month, Shpadoinkle nevertheless achieved record profits, and flew $3.01 MILLION worth of assignments in OVER 900.0 FBO operations (and 446 flights according to FSE Reporter, putting Shpadoinkle in the top 10 groups by flights in February), a new high for Shpadoinkle second only to what is induced by substances in our contract shipping manifests:

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Unless you plan on flying often or absolutely need full control of an aircraft, renting is cool. Renting from Shpadoinkle is especially cool.

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